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Eggs on a spit, one of the absurdities and games of cooks

Its camping season! Its camping season! Time to do crazy recipes you can only make properly on a camp fire.

If you like to play with fire and want a (relatively) cheap dish to experiment with ‘Eggs on a Spit’ is a wonderful game for a cook.

Pierce eggs lengthwise on a well-heated spit, and roast near the fire as if it were meat. They have to be eaten hot. This is a stupid concoction, one of the absurdities and games of cooks. Platina, On Right Pleasure and Good Health, c. 1467

Eggs on a Spit. Heat the spit hot, mount the eggs through the ends or crosswise, and turn them on the spit as for a roast; when they look done, take them off and serve them.The Neapolitan recipe collection (15th C)

Two different approaches to the same problem: roasting an egg. Eggs might be liquidy on the inside of a shell but they are not watery, they are viscous. The trick for cooking the egg is not really heating the spit, although it might help, but placement of the egg. You will probably end up with some of the egg spilling into the fire, especially as you are learning the technique, but if you pay attention the waste won’t be too high.

Ingredients:
* 1 or 2 eggs (per person)

Directions:

Let your fire die down to coals, you want a cooking fire not a campfire.

Pierce both ends of the egg carefully with a pin (or is using free range goose eggs an awl)

Thread the egg slowly onto a long skewer, or long hot dog fork.

Hold the egg ~2 feet from coals, parallel to the ground, to roast, ~10 minutes.

If you feel like the skewer is vibrating heavily, then the egg is boiling and too close to fire.

If the egg white pours out of each end then the egg is boiling and is too close to fire.

If the egg goop that leaked out when you skewered the egg isn’t turning white on the outside of the shell then you are too far away from the fire.

The egg might crack, don’t worry, the egg should still hold together inside the shell, unless you are too close to the fire.